Cylinder (engine)

A cylinder in an internal combustion engine or external combustion engine is the space within which a piston travels. Multiple cylinders are commonly arranged side by side in a bank, or 'block'. A cylinder block is typically cast from aluminum or cast iron before precision features are machined into it. The cylinders may then be lined with 'sleeves' of some harder metal, or given a wear-resistant coating such as Nikasil. In some engines, especially French designs, the cylinders have "wet liners", which means that they are not part of the main casting and coolant is free to flow around the outside each individual cylinder. Wet lined engines have better cooling and more even temperature distribution, but the block is somewhat less rigid. The cylinder block sits between the engine crankcase and the cylinder head, translating the reciprocating motion of the pistons into the rotating motion of the crankshaft via connecting rods attached to the pistons and crank.

A piston is sealed in each cylinder by a series of metal rings that fit around the circumference of the piston in machined grooves. These rings are made of some variety of spring steel which makes positive contact with the hard walls of the sleeve (this contact, and the resulting wear explains the necessity of some hard surface lining the cylinder).

Air-cooled engines generally use individual cases for each cylinder to facilitate cooling. inlinemotorcycle engines provide a notable exception to this norm, where two, three, four, or even six cylinder air-cooled motors use a common cylinder block to great effect. Water-cooled engines with only a few cylinders may also use individual cylinder cases, though this actually makes the cooling system more complex. The Ducati motorcycle company, for example, which for years used air-cooled motors with individual cylinder cases, left the basic design of their V-twin engine intact while adapting it to water-cooling.

A cylinder's displacement is defined as the area of the cylinder's cross-section (the bore) multiplied by the linear distance the piston travels within the cylinder (the stroke). This is called the 'swept volume' of a cylinder. The engine displacement is defined by the swept volume of a cylinder multiplied by the number of cylinders in the engine (all cylinders being of the same swept volume).

In the accompanying drawing, which depicts a cross-section of a steam engine cylinder, the bottom sliding part is the piston, and the top sliding part is a valve that directs steam into the two ends of the cylinder alternately.